Hear My Eyes Updates Classic Films With Original New Music

Haydn Green was living in Berlin when he began seeing films in unusual contexts. After catching the OG vampire flick Nosferatu in a haunted house and Jaws on a boat, he saw a screening of Fritz Lang’s futuristic 1927 silent film Metropolis with a live score of industrial techno.

Floored by this creative reframing, Green wanted to do something similar when he moved back to Melbourne. He hosted his first Hear My Eyes event at Howler in Brunswick in 2015, selling 200 tickets to Jessica Oreck’s essay-like film The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga – with a live score by moody indie rock band Sleep Decade.

Ten years on, Green has dramatically expanded his scope. In February and March he’ll screen the 1991 blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, this time with a live synth score composed by Belgian techno DJ and producer Peter Van Hoesen.

“I wanted to do something heavy,” Green says. “It’s an extension of electronic music, but I wanted it to be bigger and bolder and contemporary.”Van Hoesen lives between the Japanese Alps and Ho Chi Minh City. For this project, Green travelled to Ho Chi Minh for a week-long creative development session with the composer. “He was thinking about all the intricate details,” Green says. “It’s definitely much more club-like than soundscape-y. We’re trying to lean more into intensity and long-form tracks that build and have big releases.”

The score is performed on six vintage synthesisers and drum machines played live by Van Hoesen and a specialised ensemble from Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS) Set designer Jackson Dickie has created an eight-metre-long desk for the players, modelled after the silvery liquid metal that the antagonist T-1000 shapeshifts into throughout the film. Also contributing is laser artist Robin Fox, whose work will subtly complement the film’s mix of epic action sequences, groundbreaking CGI and dystopian storytelling.

Green first watched T2 – and other era-defining films – at home with his two older brothers, who were sci-fi and action aficionados. “That’s the one that really stands out,” he says of James Cameron’s visionary hit, which reunited the director with Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger and is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. “It’s the one that has everything. It holds up so well.”

Other past instalments of Hear My Eyes have seen the instrumental soul band Surprise Chef score the 1971 Australian thriller Wake in Fright and rapper/singer Sampa the Great score Céline Sciamma’s 2014 coming-of-age drama Girlhood with a full band. These new scores are always performed live, and none have been released in recorded form.

“For me it’s all about the ephemeral experience,” Green says. “A really fundamental pillar of these programs is being in a room with audiences and experiencing it live.”

Every project starts with Green thinking about removing a film’s original music, what to replace it with, and why. That’s harder than it sounds, especially since convincing each film’s rights-holders to agree to the new score is part of the process. He’s been seeking the rights to Terminator 2 since 2019, and this will be the first time the movie has screened without Brad Fiedel’s relentless, machine-like original score. Green’s yet to land the plane with works by Terrence Mallick and Stanley Kubrick.

Of course, it’s all worth the chase when you can land a pairing like Tropical Fuck Storm and No Country for Old Men. With that project, the band’s ultra-intense music suffused the brutal Coen Brothers film that originally featured almost no music whatsoever. But the risk paid off. So did enlisting several members of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard to collaborate with Leah Senior, Fia Fiell and a choir for Dario Argento’s Suspiria, daring to replace the original score by Italian prog-rock band Goblin.

“That one pissed a lot of people off,” says Green with a laugh. “Purists often get a bit angry at Hear My Eyes for doing what we do. But I feel like when they come, they’re convinced.”

Hear My Eyes presents Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Melbourne: Feb 25-28, Hamer Hall 
Sydney: March 7, City Recital Hall 
Canberra: 18-19 March, Canberra Theatre

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